I want to move or copy files out of my "Copies to self" folder to save space but every tie I do I get an error, must re-index the folder, and they come back.

My "copies to self" default is collecting thousands of emails over time as I keep them for historical purposes and records. There are so many that it now take over 20 minutes to open and list.

How can I move them to another folder/message tray to clear out the "Copies to self folder" and save space without geeting the error that requires me to "re-index" only to have them all come back?

Question? How many messages do you have in folder. Recall at one point it was mentioned that 64K messages in a folder was max? Not sure if later version increased that are not? There has been talk of Version 5 going to have a new folder structure.

You also don't mention which verion of Pegasus you are using. If you haven't upgrade to 4.81pb3 would recommend that.

There is the option to reindex the file, but in rare cases that hasn't fix things 100%.

A second option is to actually rename the index file for the folder while not running Pegasus, then load Pegasus and open folder. Pegasus will then build a new PMI file from scratch. If doesn't improve things, can copy back PMI back.

I've generally copied files to diretories to keep size down.
ls -lrt COPY* | cut -b35-200
240012 Mar 5 2018 COPY1314.PMI
101362 Mar 5 2018 COPY2002.PMI
115168 Mar 5 2018 COPY2003.PMI
105020 Mar 5 2018 COPY2004.PMI
155996 Mar 5 2018 COPY2005.PMI
115876 Mar 5 2018 COPY2006.PMI
160598 Mar 5 2018 COPY2007.PMI
139594 Mar 5 2018 COPY2008.PMI
125434 Mar 5 2018 COPY2009.PMI
117292 Mar 5 2018 COPY2010.PMI
145494 Mar 5 2018 COPY2011.PMI
133104 Mar 5 2018 COPY2012.PMI
145022 Sep 5 2020 COPY2016.PMI
193284 Sep 5 2020 COPY2017.PMI
111982 Aug 16 2021 COPY2015.PMI
324146 Feb 17 2023 COPY2000.PMI
134520 Feb 17 2023 COPY2001.PMI
126024 Mar 2 2023 COPY2018.PMI
46020 Aug 22 2023 COPY2019.PMI
70210 Aug 22 2023 COPY2020.PMI
99002 Aug 22 2023 COPY2021.PMI
191160 Aug 22 2023 COPY2022.PMI
11442698 Apr 18 14:08 COPY1314.PMM
5909181 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2000.PMM
3141029 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2001.PMM
2577542 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2002.PMM
2494320 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2003.PMM
2233335 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2004.PMM
4926030 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2005.PMM
4055222 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2006.PMM
9116474 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2007.PMM
5039602 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2008.PMM
6068156 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2009.PMM
3848943 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2010.PMM
4923642 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2011.PMM
7171755 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2012.PMM
3752547 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2015.PMM
7374846 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2016.PMM
24672961 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2017.PMM
18776468 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2018.PMM
5683450 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2019.PMM
5858258 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2020.PMM
9826919 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2021.PMM
16594859 Apr 18 14:08 COPY2022.PMM
21121839 Jun 30 12:00 COPYSELF.PMM
209332 Jun 30 12:00 COPYSELF.PMI

So, check those things first. Others might have more info.

I have seen misbehaving folders not respond to reindexing as a fix. In those cases, the messages in that folder need to be copied to a new folder or folders if large, and then the original folder deleted, sometimes requiring deletion of the associated .PMM/.PMI file pair.

In your case this is what I would do:
Note: these instructions use "copy" instead of "move" as a safety method to maintain the originals. I suggest reading and digesting them first before starting. They are not difficult if you are comfortable working with a file explorer. Consider backing up your mailbox directory first.

1. Right click on the copy self folder, go to Folder information, make note of the Filename shown in the resulting popup.
2. In Pegasus Mail, create multiple new folders that will serve as destinations for messages being copied out of the problem folder.
3. Copy all messages to newly created folders.
4. Confirm that the new folders contain all of the messages.
5. Close Pegasus Mail.
6. Use a file explorer to navigate to your mailbox directory. Locate the .PMM and .PMI files with the filename found in #1. You can either delete them or move them to a different directory as a backup.
7. While in the mailbox directory look for files named copyself.pmm & copyself.pmi. Their existence indicates that you were using a self-created folder for the copyself copies. If this is the case, skip to the instructions below specific to using a self-created folder.
8. Use the file explorer to navigate to \Pmail\Programs\Defaults. Copy the following files from the \Defaults directory to your mailbox directory:copyself.pmmcopyself.pmi
9. Start Pegasus Mail.
10. Confirm that you see a folder named "Copies to self" in the folder list.
11. Set that folder as the default copies to self folder. This should be done even if the folder name is the same as it was before. To do this go to Tools > Options > Outgoing Mail > Copies to self. Use the "Select folder" button to select the "Copies to self" folder. Again, do this even if the configuration already shows "Copies to self" as the destination folder.

If using a self-created folder as the copies to self folder:
' 8. Start Pegasus Mail.
' 9. Create the folder that will serve as the copies to self folder.
' 10. Set that folder as the default copies to self folder. This should be done even if the folder name is the same as it was before. To do this go to Tools > Options > Outgoing Mail > Copies to self. Use the "Select folder" button to select the destination folder. Again, do this even if the configuration already shows the folder name of the destination folder.

That should do it!

Thank you for the input ! I have 65,539 message in the copy folder. I tried copying them out into seperate folders and organizing them then deleting those from the folder but I get the "re-index" error and when I re-index they come back. I am running pegasus version 4.80.128 January 16, 2002, build 1028. Is there another version I should be running?

The 4.81 public beta fixed sum bugs that were in 4.80 and has been solid but updating to it will not help with your current problem. I think you have done all you can do from within Pegasus Mail and that manually deleting the problem folder files as per my post above is your only option.

What is the physical size of the PMM and PMI file for your copyself.
Not sure if it has info that is sensitive or not.
As I said, I'd try renaming the PMI file and restart Pegasus and have it build a clean PMI file.
May just be that the number of messages might just make it impossible to rebuild Index.

Would be interesting to try and repair it, or extract messages.

Thanks all that worked great!!!!!